Fishing Frenzy

A Costa Rica scientific tagging expedition recently got underway at Cocos Island to study its green sea turtle and hawksbill visitors.

Marine researchers, scientists, and conservation volunteers spent some 30 hours going to the island in their search to discover migration habits of these ancient marine animals.

Imagine what they do as a kind of working vacation in Costa Rica that perhaps will contribute to preserving these marvelous animals now sadly endangered in much of their range.

Cocos Island, once described by the famed oceanographer, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever visited, lies some 340 miles off the Pacific shore of Costa Rica, about halfway to the Galapagos Islands.

It was not the pretty beaches or palms that captivated the Captain. Its beauty lies off its shores, under water, in a place that Costa Ricans have voted one of the Seven Wonders of Cost Rica. It is there that one finds incomparable treasure: tremendous schools of fish, porpoises and whales and turtles.

Marine turtles have been swimming the oceans since the age of dinosaurs. Imagine Tyrannosaurus Rex preying on them 200 million years ago when they landed ashore to lay their eggs.

The mighty Tyrannosaurus fed on them more than 200 million years ago as they landed ashore to nest.

Once, the sheer numbers of sea turtles were so seemingly without end that lost sailors sometimes found land by listening for sea turtles paddling towards nesting grounds.

Unfortunately , no more. Today, our unrestrained development of beaches and plundering of their nests have put them at risk. Millions were slaughtered in South America to make stylish Italian shoes, combs, and household ornaments.

Jacque Yves Cousteau once famously said: "If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect."

But, some governments and conservationists have not abandoned hope and are working to restore at least some turtle populations. Scientists are now tagging pelagic turtles like the green sea turtle in far-away places like Cocos Island. Some animals are fitted with satellite transmitters while others bear flipper tags to help monitor their travels and it has been discovered that some species travel thousands and thousands of miles of oceans, from tropical waters to the cold and deep waters off Canada.

We cannot undo the past but the scientists, researchers, and volunteers who are tagging sea turtles have faith that we are not condemned to its repetition.